The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix (Spoilers)

But I loved the creepiness of the ghosts, especially tall man (was that meant to be ol'man Hill?) with his stick and hat.

And did anything ever explain the clock repairman? Were we just meant to assume the house is populated with old ghosts who like being there? The ending jarred with the rest for me, it made little sense that this was their "home" when the last 95% of the show had depicted the place as insane and distressing and evil.

yeah totally

This was total shit.

Just finished last night. I want to start with this:

another thing that irked me was Shirley's one-night stand, the way it was just sort of tossed in at the 11th hour as a way to explain her being an asshole and more importantly to give her a reason to need redemption.

― evol j, Thursday, October 25, 2018 2:51 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, that dude literally materialised out of nowhere

― Number None, Thursday, October 25, 2018 3:05 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i think it could have been integrated better

― Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, October 25, 2018 3:09 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...and say y'all are bad at paying attention because Shirley's one night stand dude popped up intermittently through the entire series.

So I'm one of those who complains about horror stuff that manages to stay good for a long while before shitting the bed in the home stretch...and I don't think that happened here. Maybe my opinion will change after some reflection, but I was actually pretty satisfied by the ending. I could write (and have written) a lot about how one of the most important functions of horror imo is as a proxy for processing trauma, and that subtext was brought very much to the fore wrt this show. The hauntings, the ghosts, were at the root the various traumas afflicting the characters. So it felt like a 'you can survive and overcome' ending felt appropriate to this particular journey.

In terms of plot mechanics, I don't really expect overt explicability from my supernatural fiction, but I feel like it was mostly consistent. The house had been painted as evil, but it was also pointed out on various occasions that there some real nutbags among the myriad of ghosts in residence, and it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to assume that the presence of a loving family of ghosts might have an effect on the psychic aura.

Absolutely everyone involved in this endeavor (save maybe Huisman) brought their A-game. I will be paying very close attention to future projects from these folks.

I gots lots to say but it's early and I have, y'know, work to do but I thought I'd just get down some first thoughts.

(I kinda feel like Huisman's primary impediment is possession of a physiognomy which doesn't transmit 'gravity' very well. Which I can sympathize with.)

Huisman is/was fine as a swinging-dick soldier on GOT, he just seemed miscast to me here.

He probably would've been fine as part of a slightly less talented cast, but everyone else in this was SO GOOD.

I don't know how I've apparently failed to see pretty much everything Carla Gugino ever did...except Son-in-Law apparently? But man. I hope her career gets a serious boost from this. All of their careers.

She was great in Gerald's Game.

I give Huisman a break because I find him ridiculously good-looking. He’s probably not as good primarily because English isn’t his first language.

The casting of the adult Luke was bad. The actor was ok but the child Luke was a very particular kind of child that wouldn’t have looked yow that adult looked.

how*

yeah casting of adult luke was hilarious.

generally in Flanagan's stuff the women get the meatier/more interesting roles and this was no different (with the exception of Hutton/Thomas)

Did they buy that house on the super-cheap or something? Seems odd that they moved into this place that was pretty immaculate as it was, were going to spend 3 months there (with 5 kids in tow) doing everything themselves and then flip it? I don't think they could have painted that place by themselves in that time, let alone whatever else it was that needed fixing. Were they counting on real-estate hysteria to drive the price up?

This is a hot mess, couldn’t make it past the first episode. Why they felt a need to mess with the perfect plot of the book I don’t know

Well, it'd be tough to get ten episodes out of it

It's not the book. If I have any one real qualm about the show, it's directed more generally toward the more tendency these days of Die Hard-ing essentially original properties into 'adaptations' that aren't actually adaptations in any meaningful sense.

more (I don't even know what that was, my keyboard must be haunted)

yeah, I agree with that.

It seems like Netflix bought the rights and then approached Flanagan to turn it into a show, but how much name value does did the book really have for the majority of their viewers? I don't see why it couldn't have been an original haunted house series and succeeded just as well.

another thing that irked me was Shirley's one-night stand, the way it was just sort of tossed in at the 11th hour as a way to explain her being an asshole and more importantly to give her a reason to need redemption.

― evol j, Thursday, October 25, 2018 2:51 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, that dude literally materialised out of nowhere

― Number None, Thursday, October 25, 2018 3:05 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i think it could have been integrated better

― Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, October 25, 2018 3:09 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...and say y'all are bad at paying attention because Shirley's one night stand dude popped up intermittently through the entire series.

― a butt, at which the shaft of ridicule is daily glanced (Old Lunch), Friday, November 2, 2018 8:19 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I do remember seeing him at least once, I more just meant the payoff felt tacked-on, like the show needed to give Shirley something to have to atone for and this just felt like a half-assed 11th hour choice.

Nah. Every time the dude manifested, Shirley reacted to the vision in a way that suggested she was avoiding something shameful. The intention was fairly clear throughout and the reveal was consistent with the reactions we (or at least I) had seen previously.

I mean, there are plenty of loose threads to pick at in this series but this is not one of them imo.

To be clear, though, I'm mostly just mildly teasing people about not paying attention. The entire show was so mired in dreamlike passages and time-space fuckery that it was probably very easy to overlook at least some of those elements or miss how they fit into the larger tapestry. Like every time that dude cheered Shirley with his drink, it was so brief and off-handed and unmentioned that I did almost question whether I'd missed some prior reference to this unnamed character.

here’s my burning question though
how many freaking room are in that house? it got kinda mind boggling in the storm sequence especially. it’s like the Winchester Mansion

re: the adultery bit, I agree that it felt like a weak bit of character motivation compared to the intra-family stuff, though the actual scene depicting the affair was nicely played

xpost My addendum to that question is: how literally are we meant to take the Red Room masquerading as all of those other rooms? And if the answer is 'very' then how extensively did the house/ghosts fuck with the minds of the inhabitants to prevent them from ever recognizing the room when (presumably) it was in use by another family member?

I'm find with hand-wavey, timey-wimey 'explanations' for most of this phenomena tbrr.

find = fine

Keyboard definitely haunted this morning.

how extensively did the house/ghosts fuck with the minds of the inhabitants to prevent them from ever recognizing the room when (presumably) it was in use by another family member?

The one time I took notice of this but didn't realise at the time what it meant, was when Simon finds the dresser in the games room and when he mentions it to Mrs Dudley, she looks really confused and says "...games room?". I should have paid attention to my instinct that immediately went "hey some of these rooms arent real" but then I forgot all about it haha.

Simon = Steven urgh Im senile.

So, that room was the heart of the house. And you could think of it almost like, I dunno, the lands above the Magic Faraway Tree or some shit, it didnt have to be horrifying, and wasnt for the kids.

One other bit I remain confused by. When young Nell disappears and they all look everywhere for her then eventually she "reappars" saying "I was here the whole time and I was shouting and you couldnt hear me". WTF was all that about. Where did she go?

(yeah yeah, I get the analogy of how it was her being ignored by her family so she kills herself etc but still...)

not to carp on too much about the ending, but this sums up my thoughts exactly:

The ending is terrible - the house is meant to be a deranged, corrupting force on people, and those that end up there are lost, tortured beings. it's not an afterlife day care. All of a sudden the threat of the house is handwaved away

i was fine with nell's speech, and liv and er the dad's scene, but once the dudleys showed up it was downhill all the way. "oh no our child is dead! oh she still exists as a ghost in the house, that's cool just don't burn it down, thx!" and yes who were all the the other ghosts and how did they get there? shirley jackson spinning in her grave at the last line (delivered over the worst old man hat song).

is it true that nothing inside the house itself ever actually hurt anyone?

nell was killed (not suicide!) and forced to haunt her own past, liv was driven mad (pretty clearly suggested this was the house's doing), made to kill abigail and herself; all the others were presumably due a similar fate until nell saved them. old man hill forced to entomb himself...

the end was the one sour note, otherwise it was definitely a good show. the bent-neck lady was a classic scary figure, her ultimate explanation was next level.

Flanagan thread about episode 6

I've gotten a lot of questions about ep 106 of @haunting . Netflix released an awesome little BTS video, but for those that want more information, here's a little thread: Episode 6 was part of the very first pitch for the show, promising an episode that would look like one shot.

— Mike Flanagan (@flanaganfilm) November 4, 2018

I still maintain that the house was not inherently evil but was rather a receptacle for malevolent spirits. Another reason why which occurred to me: the Dudleys only avoided the house at night rather than cutting out altogether.

The jump scare in the car in the second to last episode is one of the best I've seen in anything in a long, long time.

the thread about ep 6 is wild, thanks for that

luckily some people noticed, all that effort went right past me!

The jump scare in the car in the second to last episode is one of the best I've seen in anything in a long, long time.

that was good, also the one in an earlier episode when the dad is comforting the girls after the hammering on the walls and suddenly goes full demon.

I've heard lots of ppl say they didn't notice the long takes, which is the surest sign that they were well-conceived. Usually they're super ostentatious and make a point of calling attention to the technique.

I for sure noticed. I was increasingly impressed with Flanagan as the series progressed (having never seen any of his other stuff) but that was the point where I was like, 'this kid is going places.'

The jump scare in the car in the second to last episode is one of the best I've seen in anything in a long, long time.

― Plinka Trinka Banga Tink (Eliza D.), Monday, November 5, 2018 8:35 AM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My gf often yelps when we're watching scary stuff but she SCREAMED and jumped out of her seat when that happened. So yeah, very well done.

i think i did notice some tracking shots, in particular the dad walking from the funeral home to the house. assumed it was cgi obv.

(PS There is a v impressive super long take action sequence in the new season of Daredevil for those who are fans of long takes and don't hate superheroes.)

It took me a few minutes into the episode, but by the time Hugh walked from the funeral home into Hill House while looking for the bathroom I was like, "Wait, there haven't been any camera cuts yet, right?" and from there I got totally into it. Frankly this hour of TV put the whole technique to better use than Birdman.

The end was fine, good even, in terms of story but they fucked up the tone and way overexplained what you were supposed to take from it. Wasn't enough to ruin a great show by any means (though the song was cutting it close).

I thought the house was certainly trying to deliberately kill people as it wanted more ghosts, and was using the crazier ghosts to achieve that end. But it turned out being a ghost at Hill House isn't the absolute worst thing.

Way, way better than a movie about a ~spooky mirror~ has any right to be.

― wayne trotsky (Simon H.)

You're mad, spooky mirror is a great premise for a movie.

https://goo.gl/images/pYHVMC

http://notcoming.com/images/features/dead-of-night/4.jpg

If you like the last line I don’t know what to say. Perhaps there’s a bias among those of us who’ve seen earlier versions/read the book?

Yeah, but...again, this isn't the book. I mean, I get that it shares a title and trivial elements with its predecessors, but otherwise I don't know why you're comparing the two.

Even within the show - what happened to the house that changes it from 'walk alone'?

^^^

Not read thread yet but hopefully kid who plays young Luke has an exciting career behind him